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Simone Santiago
I met my beautiful Simone around October of 2005. Our
receptionist at the time went down to Louisiana to help
rescue animals and brought Simone to see Dr Plotnick because
she was sick. The morning I met her, he had her downstairs
in a boarding cage, and he told me that she hadn't eaten in
a few days. The food that he put in with her, she hadn't
touched.  I looked into her cage, she looked up at me and we
made eye contact, and I think she decided right there that I
belonged to her.
I gave her a new bowl of food and she ate
for me on the spot. I decided that since she would be
staying with us for a while, I’d keep her upstairs in a
treatment room cage, so I gave her a lower cage and kept the
door open so she could go in and out as she pleased. She
found a spot on top of the towels on the radiator and made
it her own. She was infested with fleas, anemic, and she
had pancreatitis (which was seen on ultrasound) but she
showed no signs of it, actually quite the opposite, she had
a huge appetite! It wasn't long before I was going home
every day telling my husband stories about her, and I would
also hear from my coworkers that on my days off she wouldn't
really come out of her cage or bother with anyone, she
really seemed to miss me! So one day after she had been at
MCS for a few weeks, he told me that I talk about her so
much, just go ahead and bring her home. After a hiss or 2
from my resident king Jake, Simone hid under the bed for a
few hours, then after that she was right at home.
Simone
and Jake could always be found sleeping next to each other,
and after a while, she started grooming him too. My husband
fell in love with her too, who wouldn't, she was daddy’s
little girl.
We found out she had heart disease in May of
06, and it was an accidental finding because Dr P was
actually looking for asthma on the x-ray, which she also
had. So we put her on heart medication but we couldn't put
her on prednisone for asthma because steroids can cause
someone with heart disease to go into heart failure. She
had an incident with her asthma in Sept 06 where I had to
hospitalize her at the emergency vet for a few days. Her
2nd and final incident was on Nov 6, we don't know for sure,
but it seems as though she died from complications of both
diseases.
I try not to think about her last 24 hours, I get
too upset, and I feel so cheated that I didn't have more
time with her, but I guess its never enough time with them,
1 year, 10 years, 20 years, its never long enough. She was
an amazing cat, she was so loving and affectionate, and I
think that last year of her life, she was definitely happy
and felt truly loved, and she gave us the same in return.
We miss her so much, we were so blessed to have had her in
our lives.
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